Was That Even Real?

“My feet are cold, Rowen,” I whisper, my teeth clattering. I’m holding my girlfriend’s hand, desperately trying to warm up. She laughs and says, “Me too, let's grab some hot chocolate or something when we pass the stores on the side of the road in a few minutes.”

We shuffle into the small cafe, feeling instant relief with the warm air against our revealed skin. We both let out a subtle sigh of relief. The cafe is crammed with people and we have to walk across the whole cafe to get into the back of the line. We stand in the line, huddled together, slowly inching forward as the line gets shorter.

“What do you want, Collette?” Rowen asks me, taking 20 dollars out of her back pocket. I respond with a cold shiver down my spine, “A small hot chocolate, thanks.”

She orders two small hot chocolates with extra whipped cream for herself. We walk over and sit in the now-vacated ‘drink waiting’ area.

“Thank you for paying, Rowen,” I say, smiling through the pain in my frozen cheeks, “I'll pay you back when we get back to my house.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” She says, “I’m paying, don’t worry about it.”

I ask her where she wants to walk after we get our hot chocolates. “The pond, maybe?” She says, but I can’t respond before a short woman in a bright pink shirt calls out both of our names, handing us our steaming chocolate drinks. We thank her and brace ourselves to eventually run out of the cafe, our safe, warm little haven.

We push open the heavy metal doors, feeling a blast of cold air once again, against our faces. I immediately sip my hot chocolate, feeling it warm me up from the inside out. Much better.

We head over to the pond, frozen over the surface. Rowen makes a hole in the snow and sits her cup inside of it, securing her drink in a safe place before stepping onto the frozen water. “Rowen,” I scold, “I don’t think that’s a good idea!”

“Oh relax, Collee,” She says, using my nickname. After a minute of Rowen walking across the top of the ice, I give in and decide to join her on the pond.

“Oh, alright. Give me a minute,” I turn around, carving a similar hole to the one Rowen made for her hot chocolate cup, and I place my own cup in the snow beside hers. I turn around to join Rowen. “Hey what if-” She’s gone and there’s a big hole in the ice, right where I last saw her standing.

———————————-

I scream Rowen’s name. Oh no, oh no, I think to myself. This can’t be happening.

I slip across the pond, desperately trying as fast as I can to get to the hole. I stick my arm into the bone-chilling water, flailing my hand around, trying to find Rowen. I feel streams of tears making their way down my face, my heart pounding in my ears. My hand stops stinging and I know that it's been in the water for too long, it's numb. I wince at the pain in my fingers when they warm up again, delicately placed inside my pocket. I fumble through my pockets for my phone, my only option is to call an ambulance. I shriek when my trembling fingers drop my phone onto the ice and I watch it slide into the hole, “No!” A sob racks my body.

Suddenly, a figure is launched out of the hole. The figure lands on the ice a couple of feet away, gasping for air. But the figure isn’t Rowen.

The figure is a boy with curly red hair, bright blue eyes and a face stuffed with freckles. His skin is pale, almost blue. He’s clutching his chest, struggling to breathe. He looks only a few years older than me. He looks familiar.

I rush over to him, giving him my hat and my mitts. “Oh my gosh, what-” I’m interrupted when he throws up an intense amount of water and then finally starts breathing normally again. Other than the water he’s coughing up, he’s dry, as if he didn’t just shoot out of a pond. After a few minutes, I ask him some questions, he gasps for air while answering them.

“What’s your name?”

“Carter.”

“Full name, please.”

“Carter Maxwell.”

Before I can ask anything else, he blurts, “This is seriously fucked up, let me make sure I’m not involved in some sort of crazy supernatural event or some shit. What year is it?”

I raise my eyebrows, but tell him, “It’s January 16th 2021.”

Carter’s face goes blank other than his eyes, which widen an extraordinary amount. “You’re fucking with me,” he says, smirking.

“No, no I’m not.” I say, looking down at my hands. “What year do you think it is?”

“Cut the crap. It’s 2004 and you and I both know it.” Carter snaps. When I don’t laugh, he says, “Did Jacob get you involved in some sort of crazy prank? I don’t know how he did this, but this is sick.” He looks around expecting someone to emerge from the woods, telling him that this is all a prank, but no one comes out.

Suddenly I know why he’s familiar. He’s the Carter Maxwell. The guy who was out with his friends and drowned in the frozen pond. They found his body days later after a full-blown police search. But the problem is, Carter Maxwell drowned in 2004, 17 years ago.

———————————-

I don’t want to believe that this is real. Because it isn’t. But it is. He rambles on about how Jacob is a snotty asshole and how I’m being way too loyal to the prank, but I tune him out, trying to stay calm. For Rowen. Because I know that this isn’t a prank at all. He stops talking and I look up at him, he’s finally realizing that this is real.

I pull myself up and pace back and forth on the ice. I slip a few times, barely catching myself. After a few minutes, I realize I’m thinking out loud, but I don’t care enough to stop. “Hey, what did you say you thought it was?” I turn around to see no one, Carter is gone. The water stills as I crouch down to study the water. “What?!” I exclaim. I reach my hand into the ice-cold water, hoping to grab something, anything, but I feel nothing, so I retract my hand as it begins to numb again. I decide that my best plan at this point would be to run back to the cafe and call an ambulance from there, since I lost my phone. I stumble across the frozen surface, my breath making clouds of warmth in the air in front of me. I spin around when I hear a sound coming from the hole. I approach the hole cautiously, leaning over it. Waiting for something, anything. I jump back as another figure is shot out of the hole. The figure lands a few feet away, gasping for air, wheezing intensely. “Rowen!” I cry, rushing to her side.

Her eyes meet mine and I hug her, not knowing what else to do. I let go and look Rowen up and down. Her hair is dry, her clothing dry, her skin pale, her lips a light blue color. “Are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt?” Rowen cuts me off and grabs my hand. “I don’t know, I don’t know!” Her eyes widen.

I give her a kiss on the cheek in an attempt to comfort her, and I whisper, “Can you tell me what you remember?”

She tells me about seeing a crack in the ice, but not having enough time to get away from it. “And I remember falling into cold, colder than right here, and then I blacked out for, I don’t know how long, and then I felt really cold again and then I shot out of the cold and landed right here and-” I cut her off as she starts to sob, smoothing her bangs out of her face, rubbing her hand with my thumb, “Shhhh, shhhh, its okay.”

My mind is racing and I eventually calm Rowen down, leaving us both shivering quietly in each other’s arms. I look back at the hole, expecting another mysterious person to fly out of it, but I can’t see the hole anymore. It’s gone. The hole is gone. I jump up after carefully moving Rowen off of my lap, and I run around the surface of the pond. Solid ice. No cracks, definitely no holes. I stuff my hands into my pockets, searching for any warmth I can get. I feel something in there. I grab it and pull it out. It’s my phone. My phone. The one that slipped into the hole in the ice. I turn it on, expecting it to be damaged from the water, or the cold temperature maybe, but it's good as new. I run back over to Rowen, hauling her up and draping her over my shoulder. I drag her back to the edge of the pond, picking up our hot chocolates and giving her small sips as I do the same for myself. After a few sips, I’m feeling much better, and I notice that Rowen’s lips aren’t blue anymore.

“Come on, Rowen,” I grunt, helping her to her feet. “We just have to get back to the cafe.” She nods and grabs my hand, hot chocolate in the other.

We walk. Slowly. I look back over my shoulder and see the spotless ice covering the pond.

I know so much and so little and all I can do is simply pretend nothing happened at all.